Issued Quarterly Number 149, Extra (T) January, 1902 



NATURE 


RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

AND 

MY GARDEN 
ACQUAINTANCE 


JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 


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NATURE 

BY 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 

BY 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

% 


PRESCRIBED BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY 
OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK FOR THE 
COURSE IN AMERICAN SELECTIONS 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION , BIOGRAPHICAL 
SKETCH OF EMERSON , AND NOTES 
TO BOTH ESSAYS 



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Till 13 

■ A l ' 

CONTENTS. 


Page 

3 

Emerson’s Career. 13 

Nature. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. 15 

My Garden Acquaintance. By James Russell Lowell 43 

Notes. 73 


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COPY □. 


Introduction 


Copyright, 1876 , 

By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
Copyright, 1871 , 

By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
Copyright, 1899 , 

By MABEL LOWELL BURNETT. 
Copyright, 1902 , 

By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 


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INTRODUCTION AND BIOGRAPHICAL 
SKETCH OF EMERSON . 1 


Among that group of authors — Longfellow, 
Hawthorne, Holmes, Emerson, Lowell, and Whit¬ 
tier — on whose work the chief fame of American 
literature rests, Emerson was perhaps the most 
notable thinker. Both scholars and teachers are 
likely, therefore, to think of him as belonging more 
exclusively to readers of. mature minds. Yet many 
of his most notable addresses were given before 
audiences of young men and women, and out of 
the great body of his writings it is not difficult to 
find many passages that go straight to the intelli¬ 
gence of boys and girls in school. 

The essay on nature which is given here, pro¬ 
found as its deeper meanings are, is yet in the main 
so alive with interest that boys and girls who have 

1 A Biographical Sketch of Lowell may be found in Riverside 
Literature Series, No. 30, which contains the other selections 
from Lowell required by the New York Regents in the course of 
“ American Selections.” 



4 


INTRODUCTION. 


begun to think cannot help finding it delightful 
reading. It is withal so inspiring, and will yield 
so much to any one who will take a little trouble 
to use his mind, that it is obviously desirable to 
bring it in convenient form to the attention of 
schools. Some of the best things in literature we 
can get only by digging for them ; and there is 
great satisfaction in reading again and again mas¬ 
terpieces like that here given. 

The fullest as it is the authoritative Life of 
Emerson is that by his literary executor, Mr. J. 
Elliot Cabot; but there is a shorter one in the 
American Men of Letters series by Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, and a personal sketch, Emerson 
in Concord , by Dr. Edward W. Emerson, a son 
of the poet. Mr. George Willis Cooke, in his 
Ralph Wcddo Emerson, his Life, Writings, and 
Philosophy , supplies many interesting facts, and 
helps the student to an understanding of the philos¬ 
opher. There has also been published The Corre¬ 
spondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, and a great number of review articles, 
which may be found by consulting Poole’s Index. 

His father, his grandfather, and his great-grand¬ 
father were all ministers, and indeed, on both his 
father’s and mother’s side, he belonged to an un¬ 
broken line of ministerial descent from the earliest 
settlers in New England. His ancestral home was 


INTRODUCTION. 


5 


in Concord, Massachusetts, but at the time of his 
birth his father, the Rev. William Emerson, was 
minister of the First Church congregation in Bos¬ 
ton. In Boston, then, he was born May 25, 1803. 
His father died when he was seven years old, but 
his mother continued to live in the parish house 
and to care for her family of five boys and a girl, 
all under ten years of age. Her one desire was to 
give these children an education, and for this she 
bore privations and endured hardships, which they 
shared bravely. During one year in the War of 
1812, when the stoppage of commerce had made 
provisions high, Mrs. Emerson took her children 
to Concord and lived with them in the Old Manse 
which Hawthorne has described delightfully in his 
introduction to 3fosses from an Old Manse. In 
that manse Emerson’s grandfather was living when 
the Concord fight occurred. 

Emerson was graduated at Harvard College in 
1821, and after teaching a year or two gave him¬ 
self to the study of divinity. He was not robust, 
there was a taint of consumption in the family, and 
he interrupted his study to travel in the South. 
His letters written at this time show that he was 
restless, and hard to be restrained within the 
bounds of the ministerial profession as it was then 
regarded in New England. He preached, however, 
from 1827 to 1832, and was for four years a cob 


6 


INTRODUCTION. 


league pastor over the Second Church in Boston. 
His wife, whom he married in 1829, died in 1831, 
and his own health was precarious. The work of 
a preacher was not distasteful, but he had no apti¬ 
tude for pastoral work, and he was out of sympa¬ 
thy with much that seemed to his associates essen¬ 
tial in church order. The profession, which he had 
entered almost from necessity, since there was no 
other at that time in America which invited a stu¬ 
dent of Emerson’s gifts and tastes, no longer 
seemed to him adjusted to his needs; it slipped 
from him, he resigned his pastorate; and though 
he preached occasionally afterward, he became 
thereafter distinctly a writer, maintaining himself 
mainly by lecturing, and living in a plain manner 
at Concord. 

There was an intellectual ferment in New Eng¬ 
land when Emerson was in his early manhood, and 
he was himself one of the special and active agents 
in stirring the minds of men. Changes were tak¬ 
ing place in the way in which people looked at 
education, religion, politics, and society. A great 
many subjects were discussed for which there 
seemed to be no place either in the pulpit or in 
legislatures, and those who had something to say 
were in great demand as lecturers. Public enter¬ 
tainments were not so varied then as now, nor so 
common, and people flocked to halls and meeting- 



INTRODUCTION. 


7 


houses to hear lectures. Emerson, though not the 
most popular, was the most celebrated of these lec¬ 
turers, and frequently gave courses of lectures in 
Boston and elsewhere. He was called upon also 
to speak at college commencements and on other 
special occasions, and it was rather through these 
lectures and addresses than through his printed 
books that, for a long time, he made himself 
known to men. 

He made a voyage to Europe in 1833 on ac¬ 
count of ill-health, and during his journey visited 
Thomas Carlyle, then scarcely more known than 
Emerson himself, who had, however, discovered 
his genius in his writings. From this beginning 
there grew one of the notable friendships which 
sometimes mark the association of intellectual men. 
Emerson went to Europe again in 1847, with spe¬ 
cial reference to courses of lectures which he had 
been invited to give in England. He made a 
third visit in 1872, and on these two occasions 
made and renewed acquaintance with leading 
thinkers and poets. Except for his lecturing tours 
and these journeys, and for one made across the 
continent in 1871 which has been agreeably re¬ 
corded by James Bradley Thayer in his little vol¬ 
ume, A Western Journey with Mr. Emerson , he 
spent his life quietly in Concord. He was mar¬ 
ried a second time in 1835, and died at Concord 
April 27, 1882. 


8 


INTRODUCTION. 


His first published prose work was Nature, in 
1836. He wrote poems when in college, but his 
first publication of verse was in The Dial, a maga¬ 
zine established in 1840, and the representative of 
a knot of men and women of whom Emerson was 
the acknowledged or unacknowledged leader. The 
first volume of his poems was published in 1847, 
and the second twenty years later. Meanwhile he 
put forth successive volumes of prose, and in the 
latest collective edition of his writings, the Diver- 
side Edition, there is one volume of verse and ten 
of prose. 

In form the prose is either the oration or the 
essay, with one exception. English Traits records 
the observations of the writer after his first two 
journeys to England ; and while it may loosely be 
classed among essays, it has certain distinctive 
features which separate it from the essays of the 
same writer ; there is in it narrative, reminiscence, 
and description, which make it more properly the 
note-book of a philosophic traveller. 

Under the term “ oration ” may be included all 
those writings of Emerson which were delivered 
originally as lectures, addresses, orations before 
literary and learned societies and on special occa¬ 
sions. It may be said of his essays as well as of his 
deliberate orations that the writer never was wholly 
unmindful of an audience; he was conscious always 


INTRODUCTION. 


9 


that he was not merely delivering his mind, but 
speaking directly to men. One is aware of a cer¬ 
tain pointedness of speech which turns the writer 
into a speaker, and the printed words into a sound¬ 
ing voice. Especially if one ever heard Emerson 
does his impressive manner disclose itself in every 
sentence that one reads. In the orations, however, 
this directness of speech is most apparent, and 
their form is cast for it. The end of the speech is 
kept more positively before the speaker; there is 
also more distinct eloquence, that raising of the 
voice, by which the volume of an utterance is in¬ 
creased and a note of thought is prolonged. The 
form of the oration requires, moreover, a somewhat 
brisker manner and crisper sentences, for the 
speaker knows that the hearer has no leisure to 
pursue his way by winding clauses. 

Yet the spirit of the essay, the other great divi¬ 
sion of Emerson’s writing, more distinctly enters 
into the oration. It is true that in whatever he 
writes Emerson feels his* audience, but it is an au¬ 
dience of thinking men, and he is not unwilling to 
give his best thought, and to surrender himself in 
his work to the leadings of his own thought. “ Come 
with me,” he seems to say to reader or listener; 
“ we will follow courageously in this theme whither¬ 
soever Thought leads us: ” thus in essay or oration 
he is less desirous of proving a proposition, or stat- 


10 


INTRODUCTION. 


ing roundly something which he has discovered, 
than of entering upon a subject and letting his mind 
work freely upon it, gathering suggestions by the 
way, and asking for its association with other sub¬ 
jects. Hence, to one unaccustomed to Emerson’s 
mind, a first reading of his writings seems to dis¬ 
close only a series of lightly connected epigrams, 
or searching questions and answers. The very 
titles of the essays seem mere suggestions, and the 
end of an essay brings with it no conclusion. In 
the essay proper he allows himself more freedom 
than in the oration, and his sentences do not con¬ 
verge so distinctly toward some demonstrable 
point. The discursive character of his thought is 
best fitted to the essay form, where it is not neces¬ 
sary to make provision beforehand for every idea 
which is to be entertained, and where the perfec¬ 
tion of form is in the graceful freedom from for¬ 
malism. The oration may be described as one 
great sentence; the essay, as an unrestricted suc¬ 
cession of little sentences. • 

“ In writing my thoughts,” Emerson once said, 
“ I seek no order, or harmony, or result. I am 
not careful to see how they comport with other 
thoughts and other moods: I trust them for that. 
Any more than how any one minute of the year is 
related to any other remote minute, which yet I 
know is so related. The thoughts and the minutes 


INTRODUCTION. 


11 


obey their own magnetisms, and will certainly re¬ 
veal them in time.” And in his journal he wrote: 
“ If Minerva offered me a gift and an option, I 
would say, Give me continuity. I am tired of 
scraps. I do not wish to be a literary or intellect¬ 
ual chiffonier. Away with this Jew’s rag-bag of 
ends and tufts of brocade, velvet, and cloth-of-gold, 
and let me spin some yards or miles of helpful 
twine; a clew to lead to one kingly truth; a cord 
to bind wholesome and belonging facts.” 

Mr. Cabot tells us that Emerson’s practice was, 
“ when a sentence had taken shape, to write it out 
in his journal, and leave it to find its fellows after¬ 
wards. These journals, paged and indexed, were 
the quarry from which he built his lectures and es¬ 
says. When he had a paper to get ready, he took 
the material collected under the particular heading, 
and added whatever suggested itself at the mo¬ 
ment. The proportion thus added seems to have 

» 

varied considerably; it was large in the early time, 
say to about 1846, and sometimes very small in 
the later essays.” 

The single, apparently detached, thoughts im¬ 
press one with a sense of the author’s insight; 
their very abruptness often lends a positiveness 
and an authority to the statements and convictions, 
and a ready listener finds himself accepting them 
almost without consideration, so captivating are 


12 


INTRODUCTION. 


they in their brilliant light. Yet something more 
than a ready listener is needed, if Emerson’s writ¬ 
ings are to be best used. They call for thought 
in the reader; they demand that one shall stop 
and ask questions, translate what one has read 
into one’s ordinary speech, and inquire again if it 
be true. They are excellent tonics for the mind, 
but taken heedlessly they are dangerous. The 
danger is in the careless use, for carelessness 
makes half truths of what has been said frankly 
and fearlessly to the open mind. No one should 
read Emerson who is not willing to have his own 
weakness disclosed to him, and who is not pre¬ 
pared also to test what he finds by a standard 
which is above both writer and reader. 

As one reads steadily, he is likely to note certain 
mental characteristics in the writer which mark all 
his work. One or two of these characteristics have 
already been mentioned; a more important and 
pervading one is his loyalty to idealism, and his 
belief in the power of the soul to work out a noble 
place for itself. The openness of his mind to new 
thought, his loyalty to high ideals, his eager advo¬ 
cacy of the real, and his insight into the nature of 
things, have separated him, and made his words 
sometimes unintelligible ; but the serenity of his 
life and the courage of his speech have endeared 
him to men, even when they have thought him 
oblivious to some aspects of human life. 


EMERSON’S CAREER. 


Born in Boston, May 25, 1803. 

Enters the Latin School, 1813. 

Is taken to Concord to live in the old manse, 1814. 

Returns to Boston, 1815. 

Enters Harvard College, August, 1817. 

Is graduated, 1821. 

Teaches in a school for young ladies, 1821-24. 

Returns to Cambridge to study divinity, 1825. 

Licensed to preach, October 10, 1826. 

Goes South for his health, November 25, 1826. 

Returns, June, 1827. 

Spends a year in Cambridge, preaching often, 1827-28. 

Is ordained as colleague of Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., minister 
of the Second Church, Boston, March 11, 1829. 

Is married to Ellen Louisa Tucker, September, 1829. 

His wife dies, 1831. 

Resigns his charge, December 22, 1832. 

Sails for Europe, December 25, 1832. 

Returns, September, 1833. 

Begins to lecture, November, 1833. 

Goes to Concord to live, October, 1834. 

Is married to Lydia Jackson, September, 1835. 

Secures the publication of Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, 1836. 
Takes part in the founding of The Dial, September, 
1836. 

Publishes Nature, September, 1836. 


14 


EMERSON'S CAREER. 


Delivers his Phi Beta Kappa address on The American 
Scholar , August 31, 1837 (called by Dr. Holmes “our 
Intellectual Declaration of Independence ”). 

Publishes his first series of Essays, 1841. 

Publishes his first volume of Poems, 1846. 

Makes a second visit to England, 1847. 

Returns to Concord, 1848. 

Publishes Representative Men , 1850. 

Publishes English Traits, 1856. 

Receives from Harvard the degree of LL. D., 1866. 

Becomes an Overseer of Harvard College, 1867. 

Makes a visit to California, 1871. 

Loses his house by fire, and it is rebuilt by friends, 1872. 

A third journey to Europe, October, 1872. 

Dies, April 27,1882. 


NATURE. 


—•— 

The rounded world is fair to see, 

Nine times folded in mystery: 

Though baffled seers cannot impart 
The secret of its laboring heart, 

Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast. 
And all is clear from east to west. 

Spirit that lurks each form within 
Beckons to spirit of its kin ; 

Self-kindled every atom glows, 

An d hints the future which it owes. 





NATURE. 


- - ♦-— 

Theke are days which occur in this climate, at 
almost any season of the year, wherein the world 
reaches its perfection; when the air, the heavenly 
bodies and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature 
would indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak 
upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that 
we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we 
bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; 
when everything that has life gives sign of satis¬ 
faction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem 
to have great and tranquil thoughts. These halcy¬ 
ons may be looked for with a little more assurance 
in that pure October weather which we distinguish 
by the name of the Indian summer. The day, im¬ 
measurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and 
warm wide fields. To have lived through all its 
sunny hours, seems longevity enough. The soli¬ 
tary places do not seem quite lonely. At the gates 
of the forest, the surprised man of the world is 
forced to leave his city estimates of great and 



18 


NATURE. 


small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom 
falls off his back with the first step he takes into 
these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames 
our religions, and reality which discredits our he¬ 
roes. Here we find Nature to be the circumstance 
which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges 
like a god all men that come to her. We have 
crept out of our close and crowded houses into 
the night and morning, and we see what majes¬ 
tic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How 
willingly we would escape the barriers which ren¬ 
der them comparatively impotent, escape the so¬ 
phistication and second thought, and suffer nature 
to intrance us. The tempered light of the woods 
is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and 
heroic. The anciently - reported spells of these 
places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, 
and oaks almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. 
The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to 
live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. 
Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated 
on the divine sky and the immortal year. How 
easily we might walk onward into the opening land¬ 
scape, absorbed by new pictures and by thoughts 
fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the rec¬ 
ollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all 
memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present, 
and we were led in triumph by nature. 


NATURE. 


19 


These enchantments are medicinal, they sober 
and heal us. These are plain pleasures, kindly and 
native to us. We come to our own, and make 
friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter 
of the schools would persuade us to despise. We 
never can part with it; the mind loves its old home: 
as water to our thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to 
our eyes and hands and feet. It is firm water ; it 
is cold flame ; what health, what affinity! Ever 
an old friend, ever like a dear friend and brother 
when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes in 
this honest face, and takes a grave liberty with us, 
and shames us out of our nonsense. Cities give 
not the human senses room enough. We go out 
daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, 
and require so much scope, just as we need water 
for our bath. There are all degrees of natural in¬ 
fluence, from these quarantine powers of nature, up 
to her dearest and gravest ministrations to the im¬ 
agination and the soul. There is the bucket of 
cold water from the spring, the wood-fire to which 
the chilled traveller rushes for safety, — and there 
is the sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We 
nestle in nature, and draw our living as parasites 
from her roots and grains, and we receive glances 
from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude 
and foretell the remotest future. The blue zenith 
is the point in which romance and reality meet. I 


20 


NATURE. 


think if we should be rapt away into all that we 
dream of heaven, and should converse with Gabriel 
and Uriel, the upper sky would be all that would 
remain of our furniture. 

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in 
which we have given heed to some natural object. 
The fall of snowflakes in a still air, preserving to 
each crystal its perfect form ; the blowing of sleet 
over a wide sheet of water, and over plains; the 
waving ryefield ; the mimic waving of acres of 
houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and 
ripple before the eye ; the reflections of trees and 
flowers in glassy lakes ; the musical steaming odor¬ 
ous south wind, which converts all trees to wind- 
harps ; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in 
the flames, or of pine logs, which yield glory to the 
walls and faces in the sittingroom, — these are the 
music and pictures of the most ancient religion. 
My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, 
and on the skirt of the village. But I go with my 
friend to the shore of our little river, and with one 
stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and 
personalities, yes, and the world of villages and 
personalities, behind, and pass into a delicate realm 
of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spot¬ 
ted man to enter without novitiate and probation. 
We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty; we 
dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes 


NATURE. 


21 


are bathed in these lights and forms. A holi¬ 
day, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the proudest, 
most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, 
power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, estab¬ 
lishes itself on the instant. These sunset clouds, 
these delicately emerging stars, with their private 
and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it. I 
am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugli¬ 
ness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have 
early learned that they must work as enhancement 
and sequel to this original beauty. I am overin¬ 
structed for my return. Henceforth I shall be 
hard to please. I cannot go back to toys. I am 
grown expensive and sophisticated. I can no 
longer live without elegance, but a countryman 
shall be my master of revels. He who knows the 
most; he who knows what sweets and virtues are 
in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, 
and how to come at these enchantments, — is the 
rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters of 
the world have called in nature to their aid, can 
they reach the height of magnificence. This is the 
meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden- 
houses, islands, parks and preserves, to back their 
faulty personality with these strong accessories. I 
do not wonder that the landed interest should be 
invincible in the State with these dangerous auxil¬ 
iaries. These bribe and invite; not kings, not pal- 


22 


NATURE. 


aces, not men, not women, but these tender and 
poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. We heard 
what the rich man said, we knew of his villa, his 
grove, his wine and his company, but the provoca¬ 
tion and point of the invitation came out of these 
beguiling stars. In their soft glances I see what 
men strove to realize in some Versailles, or Paphos, 
or Ctesiplion. Indeed, it is the magical lights of 
the horizon and the blue sky for the background 
which save all our works of art, which were other- ' 
wise bawbles. When the rich tax the poor with ser¬ 
vility and obsequiousness, they should consider the. 
effect of men reputed to be the possessors of nature, 
on imaginative minds. Ah! if the rich were rich 
as the poor fancy riches ! A boy hears a military 
band play on the field at night, and he has kings 
and queens and famous chivalry palpably before 
him. He hears the echoes of a horn in a hill coun¬ 
try, in the Notch Mountains, for example, which 
converts the mountains into an HDolian harp, —• 
and this supernatural tiralira restores to him the 
Dorian mythology, Apollo, Diana, and all divine 
hunters and huntresses. Can a musical note be so 
lofty, so haughtily beautiful t To the poor young 
poet, thus fabulous is his picture of society; he is 
loyal; he respects the rich; they are rich for the 
sake of his imagination ; how poor his fancy would 
be, if they were not rich! That they have some 


NATURE. 


23 


high-fenced grove which they call a park; that 
they live in larger and better-garnished saloons 
than he has visited, and go in coaches, keeping only 
the society of the elegant, to watering-places and to 
distant cities, — these make the groundwork from 
which he has delineated estates of romance, com¬ 
pared with which their actual possessions are shan¬ 
ties and paddocks. The muse herself betrays her 
son, and enhances the gifts of wealth and well-born 
beauty by a radiation out of the air, and clouds, 
and forests that skirt the road, — a certain haughty 
favor, as if from patrician genii to patricians, a 
kind of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the power 
of the air. 

The moral sensibility which makes Edens and 
Tempes so easily, may not be always found, but the 
material landscape is never far off. TV r e can find 
these enchantments without visiting the Como Lake, 
or the Madeira Islands. We exaggerate the praises 
of local scenery. In every landscape the point of 
astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the 
earth, and that is seen from the first hillock 
as well as from the top of the Alleghanies. The 
stars at night stoop down over the brownest, home¬ 
liest common with all the spiritual magnificence 
which they shed on the Campagna, or on the mar¬ 
ble deserts of Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the 
colors of morning and evening will transfigure 



24 


NATURE. 


maples and alders. The. difference between land¬ 
scape and landscape is small, but there is great 
difference in the beholders. There is nothing so 
wonderful in any particular landscape as the neces¬ 
sity of being beautiful under which every landscape 
lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beau¬ 
ty breaks in everywhere. 

But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of 
readers on this topic, which schoolmen called natura 
naturata , or nature passive. One can hardly speak 
directly of it without excess. It is as easy to broach 
in mixed companies what is called “ the subject of 
religion.” A susceptible person does not like to in¬ 
dulge his tastes in this kind without the apology of 
some trivial necessity: he goes to see a wood-lot, or 
to look at the crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral 
from a remote locality, or he carries a fowling-piece 
or a fishing-rod. I suppose this shame must have 
a good reason. A dilettantism in nature is barren 
and unworthy. The fop of fields is no better than 
his brother of Broadway. Men are naturally hunt¬ 
ers and inquisitive of wood-craft, and I suppose 
that such a gazetteer as wood-cutters and Indians 
should furnish facts for, would take place in the 
most sumptuous drawing-rooms of all the “Wreaths” 
and “ Flora’s chaplets ” of the bookshops; yet or¬ 
dinarily, whether we are too clumsy for so subtle a 
topic, or from whatever cause, as soon as men begin 


NATURE. 


25 


to write on nature, they fall into euphuism. Fri¬ 
volity is a most unfit tribute to Pan, who ought to 
be represented in the mythology as the most con¬ 
tinent of gods. I would not be frivolous before 
the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I 
cannot renounce the right of returning often to this 
old topic. The multitude of false churches accred¬ 
its the true religion. Literature, poetry, science are 
the homage of man to this unfathomed secret, con¬ 
cerning which no sane man can affect an indiffer¬ 
ence or incuriosity. Nature is loved by what is 
best in us. It is loved as the city of God, although, 
or rather because there is no citizen. The sunset 
is unlike anything that is underneath it: it wants 
men. And the beauty of nature must always seem 
unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human 
figures that are as good as itself. If there were 
good men, there would never be this rapture in na¬ 
ture. If the king is in the palace, nobody looks at 
the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is 
filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from 
the people to find relief in the majestic men that 
are suggested by the pictures and the architecture. 
The critics "who complain of the sickly separation 
of the beauty of nature from the thing to be done, 
must consider that our hunting of the picturesque 
is inseparable from our protest against false society. 
Man is fallen ; nature is erect, and serves as a 


26 


NATURE. 


differential thermometer, detecting the presence or 
absence of the divine sentiment in man. By fault 
of our dulness and selfishness we are looking up to 
nature, but when we are convalescent, nature will 
look up to us. We see the foaming brook with 
compunction: if our own life flowed with the right 
energy, we should shame the brook. The stream of 
zeal sparkles with real fire, and not with reflex 
rays of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly 
studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes 
astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to 
show where our spoons are gone); and anatomy 
and physiology become phrenology and palmistry. 

But taking timely warning, and leaving many 
things unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit 
our homage to the Efficient Nature, natura natu- 
rans , the quick cause before which all forms flee as 
the driven snows; itself secret, its works driven 
before it in flocks and multitudes, (as the ancients 
represented nature by Proteus, a shepherd,) and in 
undescribable variety. It publishes itself in crea¬ 
tures, reaching from particles and spiculse through 
transformation on transformation to the highest 
symmetries, arriving at consummate results without 
a shock or a leap. A little heat, that is a little mo¬ 
tion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white 
and deadly cold poles of the earth from the prolific 
tropical climates. All changes pass without vio- 


NATURE. 


27 


lence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions of 
boundless space and boundless time. Geology has 
initiated us into the secularity of nature, and taught 
us to disuse our dame-school measures, and exchange 
our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes for her large 
style. We knew nothing rightly, for want of per¬ 
spective. Now we learn what patient periods must 
round themselves before the rock is formed; then 
before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race 
has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into 
soil, and opened the door for the remote Flora, 
Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona to come in. How far 
off yet is the trilobite ! how far the quadruped! 
how inconceivably remote is man ! All duly arrive, 
and then race after race of men. It is a long way 
from granite to the oyster; farther yet to Plato and 
the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet 
all must come, as surely as the first atom has two 
sides. 

Motion or change and identity or rest are the 
first and second secrets of nature : — Motion and 
Kest. The whole code of her laws may be written 
on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring. The 
whirling bubble on the surface of a brook admits 
us to the secret of the mechanics of the sky. Every 
shell on the beach is a key to it. A little water 
made to rotate in a cup explains the formation of 
the simpler shells; the addition of matter from 


28 


NATURE. 


year to year arrives at last at the most complex 
forms; and yet so poor is nature with all her craft, 
that from the beginning to the end of the universe 
she has but one stuff, — but one stuff with its two 
ends, to serve up all her dream-like variety. Com¬ 
pound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water, tree, 
man, it is still one stuff, and betrays the same prop¬ 
erties. 

Nature is always consistent, though she feigns 
to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, 
and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips 
an animal to find its place and living in the earth, 
and at the same time she arms and equips another 
animal to destroy it. Space exists to divide crea¬ 
tures ; but by clothing the sides of a bird with a few 
feathers she gives him a petty omnipresence. The 
direction is forever onward, but the artist still goes 
back for materials and begins again with the first 
elements on the most advanced stage : otherwise all 
goes to ruin. If we look at her work, we seem to 
catch a glance of a system in transition. Plants are 
the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; 
but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; 
the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan 
their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The 
animal is the novice and probationer of a more 
advanced order. The men, though young, having 
tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, are 


NATURE. 


29 


already dissipated: the maples and ferns are still 
uncorrupt; yet no doubt when they come to con¬ 
sciousness they too will curse and swear. Flowers 
so strictly belong to youth that we adult men soon 
come to feel that their beautiful generations con¬ 
cern not us: we have had our day; now let the 
children have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we 
are old bachelors with our ridiculous tenderness. 

Things are so strictly related, that according to 
the skill of the eye, from any one object the parts 
and properties of any other may be predicted. If 
we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city 
wall would certify us of the necessity that man 
must exist, as readily as the city. That identity 
makes us all one, and reduces to nothing great in¬ 
tervals on our customary scale. We talk of devia¬ 
tions from natural life, as if artificial life were not 
also natural. The smoothest curled courtier in the 
• boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude 
and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its 
own ends, and is directly related, there amid es¬ 
sences and billetsdoux, to Himmaleh mountain- 
chains and the axis of the globe. If we consider 
how much we are nature’s, we need not be supersti¬ 
tious about towns, as if that terrific or benefic force 
did not find us there also, and fashion cities. Na¬ 
ture, who made the mason, made the house. We 
may easily hear too much of rural influences. The 


30 


NATURE. 


cool disengaged air of natural objects makes them 
enviable to us, chafed and irritable creatures with 
red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as 
they if we camp out and eat roots ; but let us be 
men instead of woodchucks and the oak and the 
elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs 
of ivory on carpets of silk. 

This guiding identity runs through all the sur¬ 
prises and contrasts of the piece, and characterizes 
every law. Man carries the world in his head, the 
•whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a 
thought. Because the history of nature is charac¬ 
tered in his brain, therefore is he the prophet and 
discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact in 
natural science was divined by the presentiment of 
somebody, before it was actually verified. A man 
does not tie his shoe without recognizing laws which 
bind the farthest regions of nature : moon, plant, 
gas, crystal, are concrete geometry and numbers. 
Common sense knows its own, and recognizes the 
fact at first sight in chemical experiment. The 
common sense of Franklin, Dalton, Davy and 
Black, is the same common sense which made the 
arrangements which now it discovers. 

If the identity expresses organized rest, the coun¬ 
ter action runs also into organization. The astron¬ 
omers said , 4 Give us matter and a little motion and 
we will construct the universe. It is not enough 


NATURE. 


31 


that we should have matter, we must also have 
a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and 
generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centrip¬ 
etal forces. Once heave the ball from the hand, 
and we can show how all this mighty order grew.’ 
—‘ A very unreasonable postulate, ’ said the meta¬ 
physicians, ‘and a plain begging of the question. 
Could you not prevail to know the genesis of pro¬ 
jection, as well as the continuation of it ? ’ Nature, 
meanwhile, had not waited for the discussion, but, 
right or wrong, bestowed the impulse, and the balls 
rolled. It was no great affair, a mere push, but the 
astronomers were right in making much of it, for 
there is no end to the consequences of the act. That 
famous aboriginal push propagates itself through 
all the balls of the system, and through every atom 
of every ball; through all the races of creatures, 
and through the history and performances of every 
individual. Exaggeration is in the course of things. 
Nature sends no creature, no man into the world 
without adding a small excess of his proper quality. 
Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the 
impulse ; so to every creature nature added a little 
violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to 
put it on its way; in every instance a slight gen¬ 
erosity, a drop too much. Without electricity the 
air would rot, and without this violence of direc¬ 
tion which men and women have, without a spice of 


32 


NATURE . 


bigot and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. W e 
aim above the mark to hit the mark. Every act 
hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. And 
when now and then comes along some sad, sharp- 
eyed man, who sees how paltry a game is played, 
and refuses to play but blabs the secret; — how 
then? Is the bird flown? O no, the wary Na¬ 
ture sends a new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier 
youths, with a little more excess of direction to hold 
them fast to their several aim ; makes them a little 
wrong-headed in that direction in which they are 
rightest, and on goes the game again with new whirl, 
for a generation or two more. The child with his 
sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by 
every sight and sound, without any power to com¬ 
pare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle 
or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon or a ginger¬ 
bread-dog, individualizing everything, generalizing 
nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down 
at night overpowered by the fatigue which this day 
of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Na¬ 
ture has answered her purpose with the curly, dim¬ 
pled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has 
secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame 
by all these attitudes and exertions, — an end of the 
first importance, which could not be trusted to any 
care less perfect than her own. This glitter, this 
opaline lustre plays round the top of every toy to 


NATURE. 


33 


bis eye to insure his fidelity, and he is deceived to 
his good. We are made alive and kept alive by 
the same arts. Let the stoics say what they please, 
we do not eat for the good of living, but because 
the meat is savory and the appetite is keen. The 
vegetable life does not content itself with casting 
from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills 
the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, 
if thousands perish, thousands may plant them¬ 
selves ; that hundreds may come up, that tens may 
live to maturity ; that at least one may replace the 
parent. All things betray the same calculated pro¬ 
fusion. The excess of fear with which the animal 
frame is hedged round, shrinking from cold, start¬ 
ing at sight of a snake or at a sudden noise, pro¬ 
tects us, through a multitude of groundless alarms, 
from some one real danger at last. The lover seeks 
in marriage his private felicity and perfection, with 
no prospective end; and nature hides in his happi¬ 
ness her own end, namely progeny, or the perpe¬ 
tuity of the race. 

But the craft with which the world is made, runs 
also into the mind and character of men. No man 
is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his com¬ 
position, a slight determination of blood to the head, 
to make sure of holding him hard to some one point 
which nature had taken to heart. Great causes are 
never tried on their merits; but the cause is re- 


34 


NATURE. 


duced to particulars to suit the size of the partisans, 
and the contention is ever hottest on minor matters. 
Not less remarkable is the over faith of each man in 
• the importance of what he has to do or say. The 
poet, the prophet, has a higher value for what he 
utters than any hearer, and therefore it gets spoken. 
The strong, self-complacent Luther declares with 
an emphasis not to be mistaken, that “ God him¬ 
self cannot do without wise men.” Jacob Behmen 
and George Fox betray their egotism in the perti¬ 
nacity of their controversial tracts, and James Nay¬ 
lor once suffered himself to be worshipped as the 
Christ. Each prophet comes presently to identify 
himself with his thought, and to esteem his hat and 
shoes sacred. However this may discredit such per¬ 
sons with the judicious, it helps them with the peo¬ 
ple, as it gives heat, pungency, and publicity to 
their words. A similar experience is not infrequent 
in private life. Each young and ardent person 
writes a diary, in which, when the hours of prayer 
and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The 
pages thus written are to him burning and fragrant; 
he reads them on his knees by midnight and by the 
morning star; he wets them with his tears; they 
are sacred; too good for the world, and hardly yet 
to be shown to the dearest friend. This is the man- 
child that is born to the soul, and her life still cir¬ 
culates in the babe. The umbilical cord has not yet 


NATURE. 


35 


been cut. After some time has elapsed, he begins 
to wish to admit his friend to this hallowed experh 
ence, and with hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes 
the pages to his eye. Will they not burn his eyes? 
The friend coldly turns them over, and passes from 
the writing to conversation, with easy transition, 
which strikes the other party with astonishment and 
vexation. He cannot suspect the writing itself. 
Days and nights of fervid life, of communion with 
angels of darkness and of light have engraved their 
shadowy characters on that tear-stained book. He 
suspects the intelligence or the heart of his friend. 
Is there then no friend ? He cannot yet credit that 
one may have impressive experience and yet may 
not know how to put his private fact into literature: 
and perhaps the discovery that wisdom has other 
tongues and ministers than we, that though we 
should hold our peace the truth would not the less 
be spoken, might check injuriously the flames of our 
zeal. A man can only speak so long as he does 
not feel his speech to be partial and inadequate. 
It is partial, but he does not see it to be so whilst 
he utters it. As soon as he is released from the 
instinctive and particular and sees its partiality, he 
shuts his mouth in disgust. For no man can write 
anything who does not think that what he writes is 
for the time the history of the world; or do any¬ 
thing well who does not esteem his work to be of 


36 


NATURE. 


importance. My work may be of none, but I must 
not think it of none, or I shall not do it with im¬ 
punity. 

In like manner, there is throughout nature some¬ 
thing mocking, something that leads us on and on, 
but arrives nowhere; keeps no faith with us. All 
promise outruns the performance. We live in a 
system of approximations. El irery end is prospec¬ 
tive of some other end, which is also temporary; 
a round and final success nowhere. We are en¬ 
camped in nature, not domesticated. Hunger and 
thirst lead us on to eat and to drink; but bread and 
wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us 
hungry and thirsty, after the stomach is full. It is 
the same with all our arts and performances. Our 
music, our poetry, our language itself are not satis¬ 
factions, but suggestions. The hunger for wealth, 
which reduces the planet to a garden, fools the 
eager pursuer. What is the end sought? Plainly 
to secure the ends of good sense and beauty from 
the intrusion of deformity or vulgarity of any kind. 
But what an operose method! What a train of 
means to secure a little conversation ! This palace 
of brick and stone, these servants, this kitchen, 
these stables, horses and equipage, this bank-stock 
and file of mortgages ; trade to all the world, coun¬ 
try house and cottage by the waterside, all for a 
little conversation, high, clear, and spiritual! Could 



NATURE. 


37 


it not be had as well by beggars on the high¬ 
way ? No, all these things came from successive 
efforts of these beggars to remove friction from the 
wheels of life, and give opportunity. Conversa¬ 
tion, character, were the avowed ends; wealth was 
good as it appeased the animal cravings, cured the 
smoky chimney, silenced the creaking door, brought 
friends together in a warm and quiet room, and 
kept the children and the dinner* table in a differ¬ 
ent apartment. Thought, virtue, beauty, were the 
ends; but it was known that men of thought and 
virtue sometimes had the headache, or wet feet, or 
could lose good time whilst the room was getting 
warm in winter days. Unluckily, in the exertions 
necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main 
attention has been diverted to this object; the 
old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove 
friction has come to be the end. That is the ridi¬ 
cule of rich men ; and Boston, London, Vienna, and 
now the governments generally of the world are 
cities and governments of the rich ; and the masses 
are not men, but poor men , that is, men who would 
be rich; this is the ridicule of the class, that they 
arrive with pains and sweat and fury nowhere; 
when all is done, it is for nothing. They are like 
one who has interrupted the conversation of a 
company to make his speech, and nowUas forgot¬ 
ten what he went to say. The appearance strikes 


38 


NATURE. 


the eye everywhere of an aimless society, of aim¬ 
less nations. Were the ends of nature so great 
and cogent as to exact this immense sacrifice of 
men? 

Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, 
as might be expected, a similar effect on the eye 
from the face of external nature. There is in 
woods and waters a certain enticement and flat¬ 
tery, together with a failure to yield a present sat¬ 
isfaction. This disappointment is felt in every 
landscape. I have seen the softness and beauty 
of the summer clouds floating feathery overhead, 
enjoying, as it seemed, their height and privilege 
of motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much 
the drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking 
to some pavilions and gardens of festivity beyond. 
It is an odd jealousy, but the poet finds himself 
not near enough to his object. The pine-tree, the 
river, the bank of flowers before him does not seem 
to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere. This or 
this is but outskirt and far-off reflection and echo 
of the triumph that has passed by and is now at 
its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the 
neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the field, 
then in the adjacent woods. The present object 
shall give you this sense of stillness that follows a 
pageant which has just gone by. What splendid 
distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and love- 



NATURE. 


39 


iiness in the sunset! But who can go where they 
are, or lay his hand or plant his foot thereon? 
Off they fall from the round world forever and 
ever. It is the same among the men and women 
as among the silent trees ; always a referred exist¬ 
ence, an absence, never a presence and satisfac¬ 
tion. Is it that beauty can never be grasped ? in 
persons and in landscape is equally inaccessible? 
The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wild¬ 
est charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. 
She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star: 
she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one 
as he. 

What shall we say of this omnipresent appear¬ 
ance of that first projectile impulse, of this flattery 
and balking of so many well-meaning creatures? 
Must we not suppose somewhere in the universe a 
slight treachery and derision ? Are we not en¬ 
gaged to a serious resentment of this use that is 
made of us ? Are we tickled trout, and fools of 
nature ? One look at the face of heaven and earth 
lays all petulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser 
convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts it¬ 
self into a vast promise, and will not be rashly ex¬ 
plained. Her secret is untold. Many and many 
an CEdipus arrives; he has the whole mystery teem¬ 
ing in his brain. Alas ! the same sorcery has spoiled 
his skill; no syllable can he shape on his lips. Her 


40 


NATURE. 


mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the 
deep, but no archangel’s wing was yet strong enough 
to follow it and report of the return of the curve. 
But it also appears that our actions are seconded and 
disposed to greater conclusions than we designed. 
We are escorted on every hand through life by spir¬ 
itual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in wait 
for us. We cannot bandy words with Nature, or 
deal with her as we deal with persons. If we meas¬ 
ure our individual forces against hers we may easily 
feel as if we were the sport of an insuperable des¬ 
tiny. But if, instead of identifying ourselves with 
the work, we feel that the soul of the workman 
streams through us, we shall find the peace of the 
morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fath¬ 
omless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over 
them, of life, preexisting within us in their highest 
form. 

The uneasiness which the thought of our help¬ 
lessness in the chain of causes occasions us, results 
from looking too much at one condition of nature, 
namely, Motion. But the drag is never taken from 
the wheel. Wherever the impulse exceeds, the Rest 
or Identity insinuates its compensation. All over 
the wide fields of earth grows the prunella or self- 
heal. After every foolish day we sleep off the 
fumes and furies of its hours; and though we are 
always engaged with particulars, and often enslaved 


NATURE. 


41 


to them, we bring with us to every experiment the 
innate universal laws. These, while they exist in 
the mind as ideas, stand around us in nature for¬ 
ever embodied, a present sanity to expose and cure 
the insanity of men. Our servitude to particu¬ 
lars betrays us into a hundred foolish expectations. 
We anticipate a new era from the invention of a 
locomotive, or a balloon; the new engine brings 
with it the old checks. They say that by electro¬ 
magnetism your salad shall be grown from the seed 
whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner; it is a sym¬ 
bol of our modern aims and endeavors, of our con¬ 
densation and acceleration of objects ; — but noth¬ 
ing is gained; nature cannot be cheated; man’s life 
is but seventy salads long, grow they swift or grow 
they slow. In these checks and impossibilities how¬ 
ever we find our advantage, not less than in the im¬ 
pulses. Let the victory fall where it will, we are 
on that side. And the knowledge that we traverse 
the whole scale of being, from the centre to the 
poles of nature, and have some stake in every possi¬ 
bility, lends that sublime lustre to death, which 
philosophy and religion have too outwardly and lit¬ 
erally striven to express in the popular doctrine of 
the immortality of the soul. The reality is more 
excellent than the report. Here is no ruin, no dis¬ 
continuity, no spent ball. The divine circulations 
never rest nor linger. Nature is the incarnation of 


42 


NATURE. 


a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice be¬ 
comes water and gas. The world is mind precipi¬ 
tated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping 
again into the state of free thought. Hence the vir¬ 
tue and pungency of the influence on the mind 
of natural objects, whether inorganic or organized. 
Man imprisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative, 
speaks to man impersonated. That power which 
does not respect quantity, which makes the whole 
and the particle its equal channel, delegates its smile 
to the morning, and distils its essence into every 
drop of rain. Every moment instructs, and every 
object; for wisdom is infused into every form. It 
has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us 
as pain; it slid into us as pleasure ; it enveloped us 
in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful la¬ 
bor ; we did not guess its essence until after a long 
time. 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 


ft 






I 





MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


One of the most delightful hooks in my father’s 
library was White’s “Natural History of Selborne.” 
For me it has rather gained in charm with years. 
I used to read it without knowing the secret of 
the pleasure I found in it, but as I grow older I 
begin to detect some of the simple expedients of 
this natural magic. Open the book where you will, 
it takes you out of doors. In our broiling July 
weather one can walk out with this genially garru¬ 
lous Fellow of Oriel and find refreshment instead 
of fatigue. You have no trouble in keeping abreast 
of him as he ambles along on his hobby-horse, now 
pointing to a pretty view, now stopping to watch 
the motions of a bird or an insect, or to bag a spe¬ 
cimen for the Honourable Daines Barrington or 
Mr. Pennant. In simplicity of taste and natural re¬ 
finement he reminds one of Walton; in tenderness 
toward what he would have called the brute crea¬ 
tion, of Cowper. I do not know whether his de¬ 
scriptions of scenery are good or not, but they have 
made me familiar with his neighborhood. Since I 
first read him, I have walked over some of his 
favorite haunts, but I still see them through his 
eyes rather than by any recollection of actual and 



46 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


• personal vision. The book has also the delightful¬ 
ness of absolute leisure. Mr. White seems never to 
have had any harder work to do than to study the 
habits of his feathered fellow-townsfolk, or to watch 
the ripening of his peaches on the wall. No doubt 
he looked after the souls of his parishioners with 
official and even friendly interest, but, I cannot help 
suspecting, with a less personal solicitude. For he 
seems to have lived before the Fall. His volumes 
are the journal of Adam in Paradise, 

“ Annihilating all that’s made 
To a green thought in a green shade.” 

It is positive rest only to look into that garden of 
his. It is vastly better than to 

“ See great Diocletian walk 
In the Salonian garden’s noble shade,” 

for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with them 
the noises of Rome, while here the world has no 
entrance. No rumor of the revolt of the American 
Colonies appears to have reached him. “ The nat¬ 
ural term of an hog’s life ” has more interest for 
him than that of an empire. Burgoyne may sur¬ 
render and welcome; of what consequence is that 
compared with the fact that we can explain the odd 
tumbling of rooks in the air by their turning over 
“ to scratch themselves with one claw ” ? All the 
couriers in Europe spurring rowel-deep make no 
stir in Mr. White’s little Chartreuse; but the ar¬ 
rival of the house-martin a day earlier or later than 
last year is a piece of news worth sending express 
to all his correspondents. 

Another secret charm of this book is its inad- 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


47 


vertent humor, so much the more delicious because 
unsuspected by the author. How pleasant is his 
innocent vanity in adding to the list of the British, 
and still more of the Selbornian,yb?ma / I believe 
he would gladly have consented to be eaten by a 
tiger or a crocodile, if by that means the occasional 
presence within the parish limits of either of these 
anthropophagous brutes could have been estab¬ 
lished. He brags of no fine society, but is plainly 
a little elated by “ having considerable acquaint¬ 
ance with a tame brown owl.” Most of us have 
known our share of owls, but few can boast of inti¬ 
macy with a feathered one. The great events of 
Mr. White’s life, too, have that disproportionate 
importance which is always humorous. To think 
of his hands having actually been thought worthy 
(as neither Willoughby’s nor Bay’s were) to hold 
a stilted plover, the Charadrius himantopus , with 
no back toe, and therefore “ liable, in speculation, 
to perpetual vacillations ” ! I wonder, by the way, 
if metaphysicians have no hind toes. In 1770 he 
makes the acquaintance in Sussex of u an old fam¬ 
ily tortoise,” which had then been domesticated 
for thirty years. It is clear that he fell in love 
with it at first sight. We have no means of tra¬ 
cing the growth of his passion ; but in 1 < 80 we find 
him eloping with its object in a post-chaise. “ The 
rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused 
it that, when I turned it out in a border, it walked 
twice down to the bottom of my garden.” It reads 
like a Court Journal: “ Yesterday morning H. R. H. 
the Princess Alice took an airing of half an hour 


48 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


on the terrace of Windsor Castle.” This tortoise 
might have been a member of the Royal Society, 
if he could have condescended to so ignoble an am¬ 
bition. It had but just been discovered that a sur¬ 
face inclined at a certain angle with the plane of 
the horizon took more of the sun’s rays. The tor¬ 
toise had always known this (though he unostenta¬ 
tiously made no parade of it), and used accordingly 
to tilt himself up against the garden-wall in the au¬ 
tumn. He seems to have been more of a philoso¬ 
pher than even Mr. White himself, caring for noth¬ 
ing but to get under a cabbage-leaf when it rained, 
or when the sun was too hot, and to bury himself 
alive before frost, — a four-footed Diogenes, who 
carried his tub on his back. 

There are moods in which this kind of history is 
infinitely refreshing. These creatures whom we 
affect to look down upon as the drudges of instinct 
are members of a commonwealth whose constitution 
rests on immovable bases. Never any need of re¬ 
construction there ! They never dream of settling 
it by vote that eight hours are equal to ten, or that 
one creature is as clever as another and no more. 
They do not use their poor wits in regulating God’s 
clocks, nor think they cannot go astray so long as 
they carry their guide-board about with them, — a 
delusion we often practise upon ourselves with our 
high and mighty reason, that admirable finger-post 
which points every way, as we choose to turn it, 
and always right. It is good for us now and then 
to converse with a world like Mr. White’s, where 
Man is the least important of animals. But one 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


49 


who, like me, has always lived in the country and 
always on the same spot, is drawn to his book by 
other occult sympathies. Do we not share his in¬ 
dignation at that stupid Martin who had graduated 
his thermometer no lower than 4° above zero of 
Fahrenheit, so that in the coldest weather ever 
known the mercury basely absconded into the bulb, 
and left us to see the victory slip through our fin¬ 
gers just as they were closing upon it ? No man, I 
suspect, ever lived long in the country without be¬ 
ing bitten by .these meteorological ambitions. He 
likes to be hotter and colder, to have been more 
deeply snowed up, to have more trees, and larger, 
blown down than his neighbors. With us descend¬ 
ants of the Puritans especially, these weather-com¬ 
petitions supply the abnegated excitement of the 
race-course. Men learn to value thermometers of 
the true imaginative temperament, capable of pro¬ 
digious elations and corresponding dejections. The 
other day (5th July) I marked 98° in the shade, 
my high-water mark, higher by one degree than I 
had ever seen it before. I happened to meet a 
neighbor; as we mopped our brows at each other, 
he told me that he had just cleared 100°, and I 
went home a beaten man. I had not felt the heat 
before, save as a beautiful exaggeration of sun¬ 
shine ; but now it oppressed me with the prosaic 
vulgarity of an oven. What had been poetic in¬ 
tensity became all at once rhetorical hyperbole. I 
might suspect his thermometer (as indeed I did, 
for we Harvard men are apt to think ill of any 
graduation save our own) ; but it was a poor con- 



MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


50 

solation. The fact remained that his herald Mer¬ 
cury, standing a-tiptoe, could look down on mine. 
I seem to glimpse something of this familiar weak¬ 
ness in Mr. White. He, too, has shared in these 
mercurial triumphs and defeats. Nor do I doubt 
that he had a true country-gentleman’s interest in 
the weathercock ; that his first question on coming 
down of a morning was, like Barabas’s, 

“ Into what quarter peers my halcyon’s bill ? ” 

It is an innocent and healthful employment of 
the mind, distracting one from too continual study 
of oneself, and leading one to dwell rather upon 
the indigestions of the elements than one’s own. 
“ Did the wind back round, or go about with the 
sun ? ” is a rational question that bears not re¬ 
motely on the making of hay and the prosperity of 
crops. I have little doubt that the regulated ob¬ 
servation of the vane in many different places, and 
the interchange of results by telegraph, would put 
the weather, as it were, in our power, by betraying 
its ambushes before it is ready to give the assault. 1 
At first sight, nothing seems more drolly trivial than 
the lives of those whose single achievement is to 
record the wind and the temperature three times 
a day. Yet such men are doubtless sent into the 
world for this special end, and perhaps there is no 
kind of accurate observation, whatever its object, 
that has not its final use and value for some one or 
other. It is even to be hoped that the speculations 
of our newspaper editors and their myriad correspon- 

1 This was written before we had a Weather Bureau. 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


51 


dents upon the signs of the political atmosphere 
may also fill their appointed place in a well-reg¬ 
ulated universe, if it be only that of supplying so 
many more jack-o’-lanterns to the future historian. 
Nay, the observations on finance of an M. C. whose 
sole knowledge of the subject has been derived 
from a lifelong success in getting a living out of 
the public without paying any equivalent therefor, 
will perhaps be of interest hereafter to some ex¬ 
plorer of our cloaca maxima , whenever it is cleansed. 

For many years I have been in the habit of noting 
down some of the leading events of my embowered 
solitude, such as the coming of certain birds and 
the like, — a kind of memoires 'pour servir , after 
the fashion of White, rather than properly digested 
natural history. I think it not impossible that a 
few simple stories of my winged acquaintances 
might be found entertaining by persons of kindred 
taste. 

There is a common notion that animals are bet¬ 
ter meteorologists than men, and I have little 
doubt that in immediate weather-wisdom they have 
the advantage of our sophisticated senses (though I 
suspect a sailor or shepherd would be their match), 
but I have seen nothing that’ leads me to believe 
their minds capable of erecting the horoscope of 
a whole season, and letting us know beforehand 
whether the winter will be severe or the summer 
rainless. Their foresight is provincial or even pa¬ 
rochial, 

“ By nature knew he ecli ascensioun 
Of equinoxial in thilke toun.” 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


52 

I more than suspect that the Clerk of the Weather 
himself does not always know very long in ad¬ 
vance whether he is to draw an order for hot or 
cold, dry or moist, and the musquash is scarce 
likely to he wiser. I have noted but two days’ dif¬ 
ference in the coming of the song-sparrow between 
a very early and a very backward spring. This 
very year I saw the linnets at work thatching, just 
before a snow-storm which covered the ground sev¬ 
eral inches deep for a number of days. They struck 
work and left us for a while, no doubt in search 

9 

of food. Birds frequently perish from sudden 
changes in our whimsical spring weather of which 
they had no foreboding. More than thirty years ago, 
a cherry-tree, then in full bloom, near my window, 
was covered with humming-birds benumbed by a 
fall of mingled rain and snow, which probably 
killed many of them. It should seem that their 
coming was dated by the height of the sun, which 
betrays them into unthrifty matrimony; 

“ So nature pricketh hem in their corages ” ; 

but their going is another matter. The chimney- 
swallows leave us early, for example, apparently 
so soon as their latest fledglings are firm enough 
of wing to attempt the long rowing-match that is 
before them. On the other hand, the wild-geese 
probably do not leave the North till they are frozen 
out, for I have heard their bugles sounding south¬ 
ward so late as the middle of December. What may 
be called local migrations are doubtless dictated 
by the chances of food. I have once been visited 
by large flights of cross-bills; and whenever the 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 53 

snow lies long and deep on the ground, a flock of 
cedar-birds comes in midwinter to eat the berries 
on my hawthorns. I have never been quite able 
to fathom the local, or rather geographical partial¬ 
ities of birds. Never before this summer (1870) 
have the king-birds, handsomest of flycatchers, 
built in my orchard; though I always know where 
to find them within half a mile. The rose-breasted 
grosbeak has been a familiar bird in Brookline 
(three miles away), yet I never saw one here till 
last July, when I found a female busy among my 
raspberries and surprisingly bold. I hope she was 
'prospecting with a view to settlement in our gar¬ 
den. She seemed, on the whole, to think well 
of my fruit, and I would gladly plant another bed 
if it would help to win over so delightful a neigh¬ 
bor. 

The return of the robin is commonly announced 
by the newspapers, like that of eminent or notori¬ 
ous people to a watering-place, as the first authentic 
notification of spring. And such his appearance 
in the orchard and garden undoubtedly is. But, 
in spite of his name of migratory thrush, he stays 
with us all winter, and I have seen him when the 
thermometer marked 15 degrees below zero of Fah¬ 
renheit, armed impregnably within, like Emerson’s 
Titmouse, and as cheerful as he. The robin has 
a bad reputation among people who do not value 
themselves less for being fond of cherries. There 
is, I admit, a spice of vulgarity in him, and his 
song is rather of the Bloomfield sort, too largely 
ballasted with prose. His ethics are of the Poor 


54 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


Richard school, and the main chance which calls 
forth all his energy is altogether of the belly. He 
never has those fine intervals of lunacy into which 
his cousins, the catbird and the mavis, are apt to 
fall. But for a’ that and twice as muckle ’s a’ 
that, I would not exchange him for all the cher¬ 
ries that ever came out of Asia Minor. With what¬ 
ever faults, he has not wholly forfeited that supe¬ 
riority which belongs to the children of nature. 
He has a finer taste in fruit than could be distilled 
from many successive committees of the Horticul¬ 
tural Society, and he eats with a relishing gulp not 
inferior to Dr. Johnson’s. He feels and freely ex¬ 
ercises his right of eminent domain. His is the 
earliest mess of green peas ; his all the mulberries 
I had fancied mine. But if he get also the lion’s 
share of the raspberries, he is a great planter, and 
sows those wild ones in the woods, that solace 
the pedestrian and give a momentary calm even to 
the jaded victims of the White Hills. He keeps a 
strict eye over one’s fruit, and knows to a shade of 
purple when your grapes have cooked long enough 
in the sun. During the severe drought a few years 
ago, the robins wholly vanished from my garden. 
I neither saw nor heard one for three weeks. 
Meanwhile a small foreign grape-vine, rather 
shy of bearing, seemed to find the dusty air con¬ 
genial, and, dreaming perhaps of its sweet Argos 
across the sea, decked itself with a score or so of 
fair bunches. I watched them from day to day 
till they should have secreted sugar enough from 
the sunbeams, and at last made up my mind that 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


55 


I would celebrate my vintage the next morning. 
But the robins too had somehow kept note of them. 
They must have sent out spies, as did the Jews into 
the promised land, before I was stirring. When I 
went with my basket, at least a dozen of these 
winged vintagers bustled out from among the leaves, 
and alighting on the nearest trees interchanged 
some shrill remarks about me of a derogatory na¬ 
ture. They had fairly sacked the vine. Not Wel¬ 
lington’s veterans made cleaner work of a Spanish 
town ; not Federals or Confederates were ever more 
impartial in the confiscation of neutral chickens. I 
was keeping my grapes a secret to surprise the fair 
Fidele with, but the robins made them a profounder 
secret to her than I had meant. The tattered rem¬ 
nant of a single bunch was all my harvest-home. 
How paltry it looked at the bottom of my basket, — 
as if a humming-bird had laid her egg in an eagle’s 
nest ! I could not help laughing ; and the robins 
seemed to join heartily in the merriment. There 
was a native grape-vine close by, blue with its less 
refined abundance, but my cunning thieves pre¬ 
ferred the foreign flavor. Could I tax them with 
want of taste ? 

The robins are not good solo singers, but their 
chorus, as, like primitive fire-worshippers, they hail 
the return of light and warmth to the world, is un¬ 
rivalled. There are a hundred singing like one. 
They are noisy enough then, and sing, as poets 
should, with no afterthought. But when they come 
after cherries to the tree near my window, they 
muffle their voices, and their faint pip , pip , pop ! 


56 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


sounds far away at the bottom of the garden, where 
they know I shall not suspect them of robbing the 
great black-walnut of its hitter-rinded store. 1 They 
are feathered Pecksniffs, to be sure, but then how 
brightly their breasts, that look rather shabby in 
the sunlight, shine in a rainy day against the dark 
green of the fringe-tree! After they have pinched 
and shaken all the life out of an earthworm, as 
Italian cooks pound all the spirit out of a steak, 
and then gulped him, they stand up in honest self- 
confidence, expand their red waistcoats with the 
virtuous air of a lobby member, and outface you 
with an eye that calmly challenges inquiry. “ Do 
I look like a bird that knows the flavor of raw ver¬ 
min? I throw myself upon a jury of my peers. 
Ask any robin if he ever ate anything less ascetic 
than the frugal berry of the juniper, and he will 
answer that his vow forbids him.” Can such an 
open bosom cover such depravity ? Alas, yes ! I 
have no doubt his breast was redder at that very 
moment with the blood of my raspberries. On 
the whole, he is a doubtful friend in the garden. 
He makes his dessert of all kinds of berries, and 
is not averse from early pears. But when we re¬ 
member how omnivorous he is, eating his own 
weight in an incredibly short time, and that Nature 
seems exhaustless in her invention of new insects 
hostile to vegetation, perhaps we may reckon that 
he does more good than harm. For my own part, 

1 The screech-owl, whose cry, despite his ill name, is one of the 
sweetest sounds in nature, softens his voice in the same way with 
the most beguiling mockery of distance. 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 57 

I would rather have his cheerfulness and kind 
neighborhood than many berries. 

For his cousin, the catbird, I have a still warmer 
regard. Always a good singer, he sometimes nearly 
equals the brown thrush, and has the merit of 
keeping up his music later in the evening than any 
bird of my familiar acquaintance. Ever since I 
can remember, a pair of them have built in a gi¬ 
gantic syringa, near our front door, and I have 
known the male to sing almost uninterruptedly 
during the evenings of early summer till twilight 
duskened into dark. They differ greatly in vocal 
talent, but all have a delightful way of crooning 
over, and, as it were, rehearsing their song in an 
undertone, which makes their nearness always un¬ 
obtrusive. Though there is the most trustworthy 
witness to the imitative propensity of this bird, I 
have only once, duiing an intimacy of more than 
forty years, heard him indulge it. In that case, 
the imitation was by no means so close as to de¬ 
ceive, but a free reproduction of the notes of some 
other birds, especially of the oriole, as a kind of 
variation in his own song. The catbird is as shy 
as the robin is vulgarly familiar. Only when his 
nest or his fledglings are approached does he be¬ 
come noisy and almost aggressive. I have known 
him to station his young in a thick cornel-bush on 
the edge of the raspberry-bed, after the fruit began 
to ripen, and feed them there for a week or more. 
In such cases he shows none of that conscious 
guilt which makes the robin contemptible. On 
the contrary, he will maintain his post in the 


58 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


thicket, and sharply scold the intruder who ven¬ 
tures to steal his berries. After all, his claim is 
only for tithes, while the robin will bag your en¬ 
tire crop if he get a chance. 

Dr. Watts’s statement that “birds in their little 
nests agree,” like too many others intended to form 
the infant mind, is very far from being true. On 
the contrary, the most peaceful relation of the dif 
ferent species to each other is that of armed neu¬ 
trality. They are very jealous of neighbors. A 
few years ago, I was much interested in the house¬ 
building of a pair of summer yellow-birds. They 
had chosen a very pretty site near the top of a tall 
white lilac, within easy eye-shot of a chamber win¬ 
dow. A very pleasant thing it was to see their 
little home growing with mutual help, to watch 
their industrious skill interrupted only by little 
flirts and snatches of endearment, frugally cut short 
by the common-sense of the tiny housewife. They 
had brought their work nearly to an end, and had 
already begun to line it with fern-down, the gath¬ 
ering of which demanded more distant journeys 
and longer absences. But, alas ! the syringa, im¬ 
memorial manor of the catbirds, was not more than 
twenty feet away, and these u giddy neighbors ” had, 
as it appeared, been all along jealously watchful, 
though silent, witnesses of what they deemed an 
intrusion of squatters. No sooner were the pretty 
mates fairly gone for a new load of lining, than 

“ To their unguarded nest these weasel Scots 
Came stealing.” 

Silently they flew back and forth, each giving a 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


59 


vengeful dab at the nest in passing. They did 
not fall-to and deliberately destroy it, for they 
might have been caught at their mischief. As it 
was, whenever the yellow-birds came back, their 
enemies were hidden in their own sight-proof bush. 
Several times their unconscious victims repaired 
damages, but at length, after counsel taken to¬ 
gether, they gave it up. Perhaps, like other un¬ 
lettered folk, they came to the conclusion that the 
Devil was in it, and yielded to the invisible perse¬ 
cutions of witchcraft. 

The robins, by constant attacks and annoyances, 
have succeeded in driving off the blue-jays who 
used to build in our pines, their gay colors and 
quaint noisy ways making them welcome and 
amusing neighbors. I once had the chance of 
doing a kindness to a household of them, which 
they received with very friendly condescension. I 
had had my eye for some time upon a nest, and 
was puzzled by a constant fluttering of what 
seemed full-grown wings in it whenever I drew 
nigh. At last I climbed the tree, in spite of 
angry protests from the old birds against my in¬ 
trusion. The mystery had a very simple solution. 
In building the nest, a long piece of packthread 
had been somewhat loosely woven in. Three of 
the young had contrived to entangle themselves in 
it, and had become full-grown without being able 
to launch themselves upon the air. One was un¬ 
harmed ; another had so tightly twisted the cord 
about its shank that one foot was curled up and 
seemed paralyzed; the third, in its struggles to 


60 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


escape, had sawn through the flesh of the thigh 
and so much harmed itself that I thought it hu¬ 
mane to put an end to its misery. When I took 
out my knife to cut their hempen bonds, the heads 
of the family seemed to divine my friendly intent. 
Suddenly ceasing their cries and threats, they 
perched quietly within reach of my hand, and 
watched me in my work of manumission. This, 
owing to the fluttering terror of the prisoners, was 
an affair of some delicacy; but erelong I was re¬ 
warded by seeing one of them fly away to a neigh¬ 
boring tree, while the cripple, making a parachute 
of his wings, came lightly to the ground, and 
hopped off as well as he could with one leg, obse¬ 
quiously waited on by his elders. A week later I 
had the satisfaction of meeting him in the pine- 
walk, in good spirits, and already so far recovered 
as to be able to balance himself with the lame foot. 
I have no doubt that in his old age he accounted 
for his lameness by some handsome story of a 
wound received at the famous Battle of the Pines, 
when our tribe, overcome by numbers, was driven 
from its ancient camping-ground. Of late years 
the jays have visited us only at intervals ; and in 
winter their bright plumage, set off by the snow, 
and their cheerful cry, are especially welcome. 
They would have furnished JEsop with a fable, for 
the feathered crest in which they seem to take so 
much satisfaction is often their fatal snare. Coun¬ 
try boys make a hole with their finger in the snow- 
crust just large enough to admit the jay’s head, 
and, hollowing it out somewhat beneath, bait it 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


61 


with a few kernels of corn. The crest slips easily 
into the trap, but refuses to be pulled out again, 
and he who came to feast remains a prey. 

Twice have the crow-blackbirds attempted a set¬ 
tlement in my pines, and twice have the robins, 
who claim a right of preemption, so successfully 
played the part of border-ruffians as to drive them 
away, — to my great regret, for they are the 
best substitute we have for rooks. At Shady Hill 
(now, alas! empty of its so long-loved household) 
they build by hundreds, and nothing can be more 
cheery than their creaking clatter (like a conven¬ 
tion of old-fashioned tavern-signs) as they gather 
at evening to debate in mass meeting their windy 
politics, or to gossip at their tent-doors over the 
events of the day. Their port is grave, and their 
stalk across the turf as martial as that of a second- 
rate ghost in Hamlet. They never meddled with 
my corn, so far as I could discover. 

For a few years I had crows, but their nests are 
an irresistible bait for boys, and their settlement 
was broken up. They grew so wonted as to throw 
off a great part of their shyness, and to tolerate 
my near approach. One very hot day I stood for 
some time within twenty feet of a mother and three 
children, who sat on an elm bough over my head, 
gasping in the sultry air, and holding their wings 
half-spread for coolness. All birds during the 
pairing season become more or less sentimental, 
and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike 
the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their 
habitual song. The crow is very comical as a 


62 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


lover, and to hear him trying to soften his croak to 
the proper Saint Preux standard, has something 
the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tenny¬ 
son. Yet there are few things to my ear more 
melodious than his caw of a clear winter morning 
as it drops to you filtered through five hundred 
fathoms of crisp blue air. The hostility of all 
smaller birds makes the moral character of the 
crow, for all his deaconlike demeanor and garb, 
somewhat questionable. He could never sally 
forth without insult. The golden robins, especially, 
would chase him as far as I could follow with my 
eye, making him duck clumsily to avoid their im¬ 
portunate bills. I do not believe, however, that he 
robbed any nests hereabouts, for the refuse of the 
gas-works, which, in our free-and-easy community, 
is allowed to poison the river, supplied him with 
dead alewives in abundance. I used to watch him 
making his periodical visits to the salt-marshes and 
coming back with a fish in his beak to his young 
savages, who, no doubt, like it in that condition 
which makes it savory to the Kanakas and other 
corvine races of men. 

Orioles are in great plenty with me. I have 
seen seven males flashing about the garden at once. 
A merry crew of them swing their hammocks from 
the pendulous boughs. During one of these latter 
years, when the canker-worms stripped our elms as 
bare as winter, these birds went to the trouble of 
rebuilding their unroofed nests, and chose for the 
purpose trees which are safe from those swarming 
vandals, such as the ash and the button-wood. 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 68 

One year a pair (disturbed, I suppose, elsewhere) 
built a second nest in an elm, within a few yards 
of the house. My friend, Edward E. Hale, told 
me once that the oriole rejected from his web all 
strands of brilliant color, and I thought it a strik¬ 
ing example of that instinct of concealment notice¬ 
able in many birds, though it should seem in this 
instance that the nest was amply protected by its 
position from all marauders but owls and squirrels. 
Last year, however, I had the fullest proof that 
Mr. Hale was mistaken. A pair of orioles built 
on the lowest trailer of a weeping elm, which hung 
within ten feet of our drawing-room window, and 
so low that I could reach it from the ground. 
The nest was wholly woven and felted with ravel- 
lings of woollen carpet in which scarlet predomi¬ 
nated. Would the same thing have happened in 
the woods? Or did the nearness of a human 
dwelling perhaps give the birds a greater feeling 
of security? They are very bold, by the way, in 
quest of cordage, and I have often watched them 
stripping the fibrous bark from a honeysuckle 
growing over the very door. But, indeed, all my 
birds look upon me as if I were a mere tenant at 
will, and they were landlords. With shame I 
confess it, I have been bullied even by a humming¬ 
bird. This spring, as I was cleansing a pear-tree 
of its lichens, one of these little zigzagging blurs 
came purring toward me, couching his long bill 
like a lance, his throat sparkling with angry fire, 
to warn me off from a Missouri-currant whose 
honey he was sipping. And many a time he has 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


64 

driven me out of a flower-bed. This summer, by 
the way, a pair of these winged emeralds fastened 
their mossy acorn-cup upon a bough of the same 
elm which the orioles had enlivened the year be¬ 
fore. We watched all their proceedings from the 
window through an opera-glass, and saw their two 
nestlings grow from black needles with a tuft of 
down at the lower end, till they whirled away on 
their first short experimental flights. They be¬ 
came strong of wing in a surprisingly short time, 
and I never saw them or the male bird after, 
though the female was regular as usual in her 
visits to our petunias and verbenas. I do not 
think it ground enough for a generalization, but 
in the many times when I watched the old birds 
feeding their young, the mother always alighted, 
while the father as uniformly remained upon the 
wing. 

The bobolinks are generally chance visitors, tin¬ 
kling through the garden in blossoming-time, but 
this year, owing to the long rains early in the sea¬ 
son, their favorite meadows were flooded, and they 
were driven to the upland. So I had a pair of 
them domiciled in my grass-field. The male used 
to perch in an apple-tree, then in full bloom, and, 
while I stood perfectly still close by, he would cir¬ 
cle away, quivering round the entire field of five 
acres, with no break in his song, and settle down 
again among the blossoms, to be hurried away al¬ 
most immediately by a new rapture of music. He 
had the volubility of an Italian charlatan at a fair, 
and, like him, appeared to be proclaiming the mer- 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 65 

its of some quack remedy. Opodeldoc-opodddoc- 
try-Doctor-Lincoln s-opodeldoc ! he seemed to re¬ 
peat over and over again, with a rapidity that 
would have distanced the deftest-tongued Figaro 
that ever rattled. I remember Count Gurowski 
saying once, with that easy superiority of know¬ 
ledge about this country which is the monopoly of 
foreigners, that we had no singing-birds! Well, 
well, Mr. Hepworth Dixon has found the typical 
America in Oneida and Salt Lake City. Of 
course, an intelligent European is the best judge 
of these matters. The truth is there are more 
singing-birds in Europe because there are fewer 
forests. These songsters love the neighborhood of 
man because hawks and owls are rarer, while their 
own food is jnore abundant. Most people seejn to 
think, the more trees, the more birds. Even Cha¬ 
teaubriand, who first tried the primitive-forest- 
cure, and whose description of the wilderness in its 
imaginative effects is unmatched, fancies the “ peo¬ 
ple of the air singing their hymns to him.” So 
far as my own observation goes, the farther one 
penetrates the sombre solitudes of the woods, the 
more seldom does one hear the voice of any sing¬ 
ing-bird. In spite of Chateaubriand’s minuteness 
of detail, in spite of that marvellous reverberation 
of the decrepit tree falling of its own weight, which 
he was the first to notice, I cannot help doubting 
whether he made his way very deep into the wil¬ 
derness. At any rate, in a letter to Fontanes, 
written in 1804, he speaks of mes chevaux pais -, 
sants a quelque distance . To be sure Chateaubri- 


G6 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


and was apt to mount the high horse, and this 
may have been but an afterthought of the grand 
seigneur, but certainly one would not make much 
headway on horseback toward the druid fastnesses 
of the primeval pine. 

The bobolinks build in considerable numbers in 
a meadow within a quarter of a mile of us. A 
houseless lane passes through the midst of their 
camp, and in clear westerly weather, at the right 
season, one may hear a score of them singing at 
once. When they are breeding, if I chance to 
pass, one of the male birds always accompanies me 
like a constable, flitting from post to post of the 
rail-fence, with a short note of reproof continually 
repeated, till I am fairly out of the neighborhood. 
Then he will swing away into the air and run down 
the wind, gurgling music without stint over the 
unheeding tussocks of meadow-grass and dark 
clumps of bulrushes that mark his domain. 

We have no bird whose song will match the 
nightingale’s in compass, none whose note is so 
rich as that of the European blackbird; but for 
mere rapture I have never heard the bobolink’s 
rival. Yet his opera-season is a short one. The 
ground and tree sparrows are our most constant 
performers. It is now late in August, and one of 
the latter sings every day and all day long in the 
garden. Till within a fortnight, a pair of indigo- 
birds would keep up their lively duo for an hour 
together. While I write, I hear an oriole gay as 
in June, and the plaintive may-be of the goldfinch 
tells me he is stealing my lettuce-seeds. I know 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


67 


not what the experience of others may have been, 
but the only bird I have ever heard sing in the 
night has been the chip-bird. I should say he sang 
about as often during the darkness as cocks crow. 
One can hardly help fancying that he sings in his 
dreams. 

“Father of light, what sunnie seed, 

What glance of day hast thou confined 
Into this bird ? To all the breed 
This busie ray thou hast assigned; 

Their magnetism works all night 
And dreams of Paradise and light.” 

On second thought, I remember to have heard the 
cuckoo strike the hours nearly all night with the 
regularity of a Swiss clock. 

The dead limbs of our elms, which I spare to 
that end, bring us the flicker every summer, and 
almost daily I hear his wild scream and laugh close 
at hand, himself invisible. He is a shy bird, but 
a few days ago I had the satisfaction of studying 
him through the blinds as he sat on a tree within 
a few feet of me. Seen so near and at rest, he 
makes good his claim to the title of pigeon-wood¬ 
pecker. Lumberers have a notion that he is harm¬ 
ful to timber, digging little holes through the bark 
to encourage the settlement of insects. The regu¬ 
lar rings of such perforations which one may see 
in almost any apple-orchard seem to give some 
probability to this theory. Almost every season a 
solitary quail visits us, and, unseen among the cur¬ 
rant-bushes, calls Bob White , Bob White , as if 
he were playing at hide-and-seek with that imagi¬ 
nary being. A rarer visitant is the turtle-dove, 


68 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


whose pleasant coo (something like the muffled 
crow of a cock from a coop covered with snow) I 
have sometimes heard, and whom I once had the 
good luck to see close by me in the mulberry-tree. 
The wild-pigeon, once numerous, I have not seen 
for many years. 1 Of savage birds, a hen-hawk 
now and then quarters himself upon us for a few 
days, sitting sluggish in a tree after a surfeit of 
poultry. One of them once offered me a near shot 
from my study-window one drizzly day for several 
hours. But it was Sunday, and I gave him the 
benefit of its gracious truce of God. 

Certain birds have disappeared from our neigh¬ 
borhood within my memory. I remember when 
the whippoorwill could be heard in Sweet Auburn. 
The night-hawk, once common, is now rare. The 
brown thrush has moved farther up country. For 
years I have not seen or heard any of the larger 
owls, whose hooting was one of my boyish terrors. 
The cliff-swallow, strange emigrant, that eastward 
takes his way, has come and gone again in my 
time. The bank-swallows, wellnigh innumerable 
during my boyhood, no longer frequent the crum¬ 
bly cliff of the gravel-pit by the river. The barn- 
swallows, which once swarmed in our barn, flash¬ 
ing through the dusty sunstreaks of the mow, have 
been gone these many years. My father would lead 
me out to see them gather on the roof, and take 
counsel before their yearly migration, as Mr. White 
used to see them at Selborne. Eheu , fug aces! 
Thank fortune, the swift still glues his nest, and 

1 They made their appearance again this summer (1870). 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 69 

rolls his distant thunders night and day in the 
wide-throated chimneys, still sprinkles the evening 
air with his merry twittering. The populous her¬ 
onry in Fresh Pond meadows has been wellnigh 
broken up, but still a pair or two haunt the old 
• home, as the gypsies of Elian go wan their ruined 
huts, and every evening fly over us riverwards, 
clearing their throats with a hoarse hawk as they 
go, and, in cloudy weather, scarce higher than the 
tops of the chimneys. Sometimes I have known 
one to alight in one of our trees, though for what 
purpose I never could divine. Since this was writ¬ 
ten, they began in greater numbers to spend the 
day in a group of pines just within my borders. 
Once, when my exploring footstep startled them, 
I counted fifty flashing in circles over my head. 
By watchful protection I induced two pairs of them 
to build, and, as if sensible of my friendship, they 
made their nests in a pine within a hundred feet 
of the house. They shine for ever in Longfellow’s 
verse. Kingfishers have sometimes puzzled me in 
the same way, perched at high noon in a pine, 
springing their watchman’s rattle when they flitted 
away from my curiosity, and seeming to shove 
their top-heavy heads along as a man does a wheel¬ 
barrow. 

/ 

Some birds have left us, I suppose, because the 
country is growing less wild. I once found a sum¬ 
mer duck’s nest within quarter of a mile of our 
house, but such a trouvaille would be impossible 
now as Kidd’s treasure. And yet the mere taming 
of the neighborhood does not quite satisfy me as an 


70 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


explanation. Twenty years ago, on my way to 
bathe in the river, I saw every day a brace of wood¬ 
cock, on the miry edge of a spring within a few 
rods of a house, and constantly visited by thirsty 
cows. There was no growth of any kind to con¬ 
ceal them, and yet these ordinarily shy birds were 
almost as indifferent to my passing as common 
poultry would have been. Since bird-nesting has be¬ 
come scientific, and dignified itself as oology, that, 
no doubt, is partly to blame for some of our losses. 
But some old friends are constant. Wilson’s thrush 
comes every year to remind me of that most poetic 
of ornithologists. He flits before me through the 
pine-walk like the very genius of solitude. A pair 
of pewees have built immemorially on a jutting 
brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house. Al¬ 
ways on the same brick, and never more than a sin¬ 
gle pair, though two broods of five each are raised 
there every summer. How do they settle their 
claim to the homestead ? By what right of primo¬ 
geniture ? Once the children of a man employed 
about the place oologized the nest, and the pewees 
left us for a year or two. I felt tow T ards those boys 
as the messmates of the Ancient Mariner did to¬ 
wards him after he had shot the albatross. But the 
pewees came back at last, and one of them is now 
on his wonted perch, so near my window that I can 
hear the click of his bill as he snaps a fly on the 
wing with the unerring precision a stately Traste- 
verina shows in the capture of her smaller deer. 
The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morn¬ 
ing ; and, during the early summer he preludes his 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


71 


matutinal ejaculation of pewee with a slender whis¬ 
tle, unheard at any other time. He saddens with 
the season, and, as summer declines, he changes his 
note to eheu , peicee ! as if in lamentation. Had he 
been an Italian bird, Ovid would have had a plain¬ 
tive tale to tell about him. He is so familiar as 
often to pursue a fly through the open window into 
my library. 

There is something inexpressibly dear to me in 
these old friendships of a lifetime. There is scarce 
a tree of mine but has had, at some time or other, 
a happy homestead among its boughs, and to which 
I cannot say, 

“ Many light hearts and wings, 

Which now be dead, lodged in thy living bowers.” 

My walk under the pines would lose half its sum¬ 
mer charm were I to miss that shy anchorite, the 
Wilson’s thrush, nor hear in haying-time the me¬ 
tallic ring of his song, that justifies his rustic name 
of scythe-whet. I protect my game as jealously as 
an English squire. If anybody had oologized a 
certain cuckoo’s nest I know of (I have a pair in 
my garden every year), it would have left me a 
sore place in my mind for weeks. I love to bring 
these aborigines back to the mansuetude they 
showed to the early voyagers, and before (forgive 
the involuntary pun) they had grown accustomed to 
man and knew his savage ways. And they repay 
your kindness with a sweet familiarity too delicate 
ever to breed contempt. I have made a Penn- 
treaty with them, preferring that to the Puritan 
way with the natives, which converted them to a 


72 


MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE 


little Hebraism and a great deal of Medford rum. 
If they will not come near enough to me (as most 
of them will), I bring them close with an opera- 
glass, ‘— a much better weapon than a gun. I 
would not, if I could, convert them from their 
pretty pagan ways. The only one I sometimes 
have savage doubts about is the red squirrel. I 
think he oologizes. I know he eats cherries (we 
counted five of them at one time in a single tree, 
the stones pattering down like the sparse hail that 
preludes a storm), and that he gnaws off the small 
end of pears to get at the seeds. He steals the 
corn from under the noses of my poultry. But 
what would you have ? He will come down upon a 
limb of the tree I am lying under till he is within 
a yard of me. He and his mate will scurry up and 
down the great black-walnut for my diversion, 
chattering like monkeys. Can I sign his death- 
warrant who has tolerated me about his grounds so 
long ? Not I. Let them steal, and welcome. I am 
sure I should, had I had the same bringing up and 
the same temptation. As for the birds, I do not be¬ 
lieve there is one of them but does more good than 
harm; and of how many featherless bipeds can 
this be said ? 


NOTES. 


NATURE. 

Page 20, line 2. Gabriel. Hebrew, “ God is my strong 
one,” the name of one of the seven archangels. 

Line 3. Uriel. Hebrew, “ Light of God,” another of the 
archangels. 

Line 20. The village. “ On the skirt of the village.” 
Concord, where Emerson lived mainly from 1832 until his 
death. 

Line 21. River. The Concord River. 

Page 21, line 2. Villeggiatura. Italian, the enjoyment 
of country pleasures. 

Page 22, line 7. Versailles. The famous royal palace of 
Louis XIII. of France and his successors. 

Paphos. The celebrated temple of Astarte or Venus in 
the island of Cyprus. 

Line 8. Ctesiphon. The site of the great palace of 
Khusrau I., king of Persia. 

Line 19. Notch Mountains. Probably the White Moun¬ 
tains, in the vicinity of Crawford Notch. 

Line 22. Dorian. Grecian. 

Apollo. In Greek and later in Roman mythology, one of 
the great Olympian gods, the god of music, poetry, and 
healing. 

Diana. In Roman mythology the goddess of the moon, 
the divine huntress. 

Page 23, line 16. Tempe. A valley in eastern Thessaly, 
celebrated from ancient times for its beauty. 


74 


NOTES. 


Line 18. Como Lake. A lake of great beauty near the 
Swiss border in Northern Italy. 

Line 19. Madeira Islands. A group of islands belong¬ 
ing to' Portugal and situated in the Atlantic Ocean west of 
Africa. 

Line 26. The 'Campagna. A large plain in Italy sur¬ 
rounding Rome. 

Page 25, line 2. Pan. In ancient Greek mythology the 
god of pastures, forests, and flocks. 

Page 26, line 20. Proteus. In classical mythology a god 
who had the power of assuming different shapes. 

Page 27, line 5. Mosaic. The view of the world set 
forth in Genesis. 

Ptolemaic. The system of astronomy and geography built 
up by Ptolemy, an Alexandrian, in the second century, which 
endured until the sixteenth, when the Copernican system 
displaced it. 

Line 11. Flora. In Roman mythology the goddess of 
flowers and spring. 

Line 12. Fauna. The goddess of fields and shepherds. 

Ceres. The goddess of grain and harvest. 

Pomona. The goddess of fruit-trees. 

Line 13. Trilobite. An extinct crustacean. 

Line 16. Plato. The greatest of the Greek philosophers. 
He lived b. c. 427-347, chiefly at Athens. 

Page 29, line 22. Himmaleh. “ Himalaya,” a mountain 
system extending along the northern frontier of Hindustan. 

Page 30, line 22. Franklin. Benjamin Franklin, (1706- 
1790) demonstrated by experiments that lightning is a dis¬ 
charge of electricity. 

Dalton. John Dalton, 1766-1844, perfected the atomic 
theory. 

Davy. Sir Humphrey Davy, 1778-1829, invented the 
safety-lamp. 


NOTES. 


75 


Line 23. Black. Joseph Black, 1728-1799, a Scotch 
chemist noted for his discoveries in regard to carbonic-acid 
gas and latent heat. 

Page 33, line 3. Stoics. The first Stoics were followers 
of Zeno, who lived about 308 b. c. and taught an austere 
doctrine of virtue. 

Page 34, line 7. Luther. Martin Luther, 1483-1546, a 
German reformer and the founder of the present literary 
language of Germany. 

Line 9. Behmen. Jakob Behmen (or Boehme), 1575- 
1624, a German mvstic. 

7 V 

Line 10. Fox. George Fox, 1624-1691, the founder of 
the Quakers. 

Line 11. James Naylor , 1618-1660, a Puritan fanatic, 
later became a Quaker. 

Page 36, line 22. Operose. Laborious. 

Page 39, line 26. QSdipus. In Greek legend a king of 
Thebes, who ventured to attempt to answer the questions of 
the Sphinx, a fabled monster. 

Page 40, line 25. Prunella. The plant self-heal, said to 
have been named from the ailment which it was reputed to 
heal. 

MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 

This essay was written in 1868, when Lowell was in his 
fiftieth year, and was published in the following year. Its 
first sentence shows as markedly the predilection of its 
author toward literature as the beginning of Nature show£ 
Emerson’s bent toward philosophy. 

Page 45, line 10. Oriel. One of the colleges of Oxford 
University, England. 

Lines 15, 16. Barrington , Pennant. Characters in Gilbert 
White’s “ Natural History of Selborne.” 

Line 17. Walton. Izaak Walton, 1593-1683, famous for 
his work, “The Complete Angler.” 


76 


NOTES. 


Line 19. Cowper. William Cowper, 1731-1800, a cele¬ 
brated English poet. • 

Page 46, line 2. White. Gilbert White, 1720-1793, was 
curate at Selborne, England. 

Line 15. Diocletian , 245-313 a. d., Emperor of Rome 
from 284 to 305, when he retired to Salona in Dalmatia. 

Line 22. Burgoyne, General, surrendered to the Ameri¬ 
can forces at Saratoga, October 17, 1777. 

Line 28. Chartreuse. A famous French monastery. 

Page 47, line 8. Anthropophagous. Man-eating. 

Line 17. Willoughby , Ray. Two noted English natu¬ 

ralists, contemporaries of White. 

Page 48, line 1. Windsor Castle. The royal residence 
of the English court. 

Line 14. Diogenes. A Greek Cynic philosopher of about 
350 b. c. who is reputed to have lived in a tub. 

Page 50, line 1. Mercury. In Roman mythology the 
herald and ambassador of Jupiter. 

Barabas. The Jew of Malta in Marlowe’s play of that 
name. 

Page 51, line 5. M. C. Member of Congress. 

Line 10. Cloaca Maxima. The chief drain of ancient 
Rome. 

Page 52, line 4. Musquash. Indian name for muskrat. 

Page 53, line 5. 1870. The date of this essay is given 

by Mr. Scudder in his Life of Lowell as 1868, but it was 
evidently not completed then. 

# Line 27. Emerson’s Titmouse. A reference to Emerson’s 
poem of that name. 

Line 31. Bloomfield. Probably Robert Bloomfield, who 
was an English poet and shoemaker. 

Page 54, line 1. Poor Richard. The pseudonym under 
which Benjamin Franklin issued his Almanac. 

Line 13. Johnson. Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, an 


NOTES. 77 

English poet, essayist, and lexicographer, whose fondness 
for eating is here hinted at. 

Line 20. White Hills. The White Mountains. 

Line 28. Argos. A city in Argolis, Greece ; here used 
for the entire country. 

•Page 55, line 3. Spies . See Numbers viii. 15. 

Line 10. Wellington made his early reputation fighting 
with the Portuguese against the Spaniards. 

Page 56, line 4. Pecksniff. A notorious hypocrite in 
Dickens’s “ Martin Chuzzlewit.” 

Page 58, line 5. Watts. Dr. Isaac Watts, 1674-1748, an 
English hymn-writer and author. 

Page 60, line 27. yEsop. According to tradition, a Greek 
fabulist of the sixth century b. C. 

Page 61, line 4. Blackbirds. See in The Biglow Papers, 
“Fust come the blackbirds clatt’rin’ in tall trees 
An’ settlin’ things in windy Congresses.” 

Page 62, line 2. Saint Preux. The lover in Rousseau’s 
novel “ La Nouvelle Hdloise.” 

Line 22. Kanakas. The original inhabitants of the 
Hawaiian Islands. 

Line 23. Corvine. Crowlike. 

Page 63, line 3. Hale. Edward Everett Hale, the 
author of “ The Man without a Country ” and many other 
stories and papers, was the friend of Lowell, Emerson, 
Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier. 

Page 64, line 30. Rapture of Music. Compare the 
charming lines in “ Sunthin’ in the Pastoral Line : ” 

, . . “June’s bridesman, poet of the year, 

Gladness on wings, the bobolink is here.” 

Page 65, line 4. Figaro. A gay, lively character in 
several plays by Beaumarchais. 

Line 9. Dixon. William Hep worth Dixon, 1821-1879, 
an English journalist. 


JAN 27 1902 

78 


NOTES. 


Line 18. Chateaubriand. Francois Rend Auguste, 
Vicomte de Chateaubriand, 1768-1848, a celebrated French 
author and statesman. 

Line 30. Fontanes. Marquis Louis de Fontanes, 1757- 
1821, a French politician and poet. 

Page 69, line 6. Ellangowan. A place in Scott’s novel 
“ Guy Mannering.” 

Line 31. Kidd. Captain William Kidd, hanged in 1701. 
A notorious pirate whose buried treasure is still sought. 

Page 70, line 11. Wilson. Alexander Wilson, 1766- 
1813. A Scotch-American ornithologist. 

Line 24. The Ancient Mariner. The chief character in 
Coleridge’s poem of that name. 

Line 30. Trasteverina. A dweller across the Tiber, in 
the workingmen’s quarter of Rome. 

Page 71, line 5. Ovid. Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 B. c.- 
18 A. d., a Roman poet. 

Line 30. Penn-treaty. Such a treaty as William Penn 
made with the Indians. 

Page 72, line 1 . Medford. A town situated on Mystic 
River in Massachusetts. 




Jar .2 3, J903, 


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CIjc Iiiv>cT8i!>r ^literature JrriejS — Continued 

72. Milton's L'Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and Sonnets.*** 

73. Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, and Other Poems* 

74. Gray's Elegy, etc.; Cowper’s John Gilpin, etc. 

75. Scudder’s George Washington.^ 

76. Wordsworth's On the Intimations of Immortality, and Other Poems. 

77. Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night, and Other Poems.* 

78. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield.§ 

79. Lamb's Old China, and Other Essays of Elia. 

80. Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, etc.; Campbell's Lochiel's 

Warning, etc.* 

81. Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.§§ 

82. Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales.§§§ 

83. George Eliot's Silas Marner.§ 

84. Dana's Two Years Before the Mast.§§§ 

85. Hughes's Tom Brown’s School Days.§§ 

86. Scott's Ivanhoe.§§§ 

87. Defoe’s Robinson'Crusoe. §§§ 

88. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.§§§ 

89. Swift's Gulliver's Voyage to'Lilliput.** 

90. Swift’s Gulliver's Voyage to Brobdingnag.** 

91. Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables.§§§ 

92. Burroughs's A Bunch of Herbs, and Other Papers. 

93. Shakespeare's As You Like It* ** 

94. Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I.-III.** 

95,96,97,9s. Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. In four parts. 

( The four parts also boicnd in one vohime, lmen, bo cents.) 

99. Tennyson’s Coming of Arthur, and Other Idylls of the King. 

100. Burke’s Conciliation with the Colonies. Robert Andersen, A. M.* 

101. Homer's Iliad. Books I., VI., XXII., and XXIV. Pope* 

102. Macaulay’s Essays on Johnson and Goldsmith* 

103. Macaulay’s Essay on Milton.*** 

104. Macaulay’s Life and Writings of Addison.*** 

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105. Carlyle’s Essay on Burns. George R. Noyes* 

106. Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Richard Grant White, and Helen Gray 

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107. 108. Grimms’ German Household Tales. In two parts.t 
109. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. W. V. Moody. § 

no. De Quincey’s Flight of a Tartar Tribe. Milton Haight Turk.* 

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Portraits and Biographies of Twenty American Authors. 

A Longfellow Night. For Catholic Schools and Societies. 

Literature in School. Essays by Horace E. Scudder. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. Dialogues and Scenes. 

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Lowell'S Fable for Critics. ( Double Number, jo cents.) 

Selections from the Writings of Eleven American Authors. 

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Q Selections from the Writings of Eleven English Authors. 

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S Irving’s Selected Essays from the Sketch Book. N. Y. Regents’ Require¬ 
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T Emerson’s Nature ; Lowell’s My Garden Acquaintance. N. Y. Regents’ 
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hi. Tennyson’s Princess. Rolfe. (Do 
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112. Virgil's ALneid. Books I.-III. Trans 

113. Poems from the Writings of Ralph 

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114. Old Greek Folk Stories. Josephine Preston Peabody.* 

115. Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin, and Other Poems. 

116. Shakespeare's Hamlet. Richard Grant White and Helen GrayCone.§ 

117. 118. Stories from the Arabian Nights. In two parts.t 

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122. The Great Debate: Webster's Reply to Hayne.** 

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123. Lowell's Democracy, and Other Papers.** 

124. Aldrich's Baby Bell, The Little Violinist, etc. 

125. Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. Arthur Gilman.* 

126. The King of the Golden River, etc., by John Ruskin, etc * 

127. Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn, The E ve of St. Agnes, etc. 

128. Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems. 

129. Plato’s The Judgment of Socrates : being The Apology, Crito. and 

the Closing Scene of Phaedo. Translated by Paul E. More. 

130. Emerson’s The Superlative, and Other Essays. 

131. Emerson's Nature, and Compensation. Edited by Edward W. Emerson. 

132. Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum, etc. Louise Imogen Guiney. 

133. Carl Schurz’s Abraham Lincoln.** 

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A Iso in Rolfe's Students' Series, cloth, to Teachers, 53 cenis.) 

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Tale. [135] Introduction, and The Prologue. [136] The Knight’s Tale, 
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137. Homer's Iliad. Books I., VI., XXII., and XXIV. Translated by Bryant. 

138. Hawthorne’s The Custom House, and Main Street. 

139. Howells’s Doorstep Acquaintance, and Other Sketches. 

140. Thackeray's Henry Esmond. With Introduction and many Illustrations. 

{Quintuple Number.) Paper, 60 cents; linen, 75 cents. 

141. Three Outdoor Papers by T. W. Higgtnson. 

142. Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies: 1. Of Kings’ Treasuries; 2. Of Queens’ 

Gardens.* 

143. Plutarch’s Life of Alexander the Great. North's Translation. 

144. Scudder's Book of Legends.* 

145. Hawthorne's Gentle Boy, and Other Tales. 

146. Longfellow's Giles Corey of the Salem Farms. 

147. Pope's Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems. Henry W. Boynton. 

148. Hawthorne's Marble Faun. With Illustrations; and with an Introduction 

and Notes by Annie Russell Marble.§§§ 

149. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Richard Grant White and Helen 

Gray Cone.* 

150. Ouida's The Dog of Flanders, and The Niirnberg Stove. , 

Other Numbers in Preparation. 

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